Is the genetically engineered chestnut tree an act of ecological restoration or a threat to wild forests?

In many countries, journalists are being targeted because of the role they play in ensuring a free and informed society.

The Puerto Rican reggaetonero has come to dominate global pop on his own terms.

What happened to the minds behind Napster, Gnutella, WinAmp, and BitTorrent after their creations irrevocably changed business and culture.

How a hanger-on at the fringe of San Francisco’s rock scene built the Rolling Stone empire.

A Dickensian profession that can still pay upwards of $650,000 per year.

The idealistic entrepreneur turns wild experiences into viral videos into actual science into a going business concern.

A former WikiLeaks employee on the motivations driving his old boss.

A writer embarks on a seven-year trek from Africa to Tierra Del Fuego.

A reporter lounges at the exclusive club for months to study the beautiful people sipping rosé poolside—and whether they’re actually doing any work.

The life and death of Marla Ruzicka, a 28-year-old aid worker in Baghdad.

A small group of programmers wants to change how we code—before catastrophe strikes.

A global network of live-work spaces is springing up to serve this new breed of millennial wanderer.

On riding China’s Qinghai-Tibet Railway just before it opened:

Staring out at the shimmering tracks and concrete-reinforced embankment extending to the horizon, I can’t help but think of the senior Chinese scientist who confessed to me that the rail line he helped build might not be safe for long.

On literary tourism:

Dickens World, in other words, sounded less like a viable business than it did a mockumentary, or a George Saunders short story, or the thought experiment of a radical Marxist seeking to expose the terminal bankruptcy at the heart of consumerism. And yet it was real.

Twenty years ago, ‘Grand Theft Auto III’ set a new standard for open-world video games. The titles it inspired have grown bigger and busier, but it takes more than massive maps to give gamers the freedom they felt on their first trip to 3-D Liberty City.

“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.”

I used to believe the art world was at war with itself, that money was fighting art and vice versa. But I’ve been living in my own ambivalence about things for a decade now, or more, and I’m starting to think it’s not a war but a new equilibrium state, defined by that ambivalence.

By day, Dan Brown runs the seafood counter at SuperFresh. By night, he does his life work: clearing, dressing, and sharing road-killed deer.

He’s got millions of followers on Vine. He’s got sponsors paying him tens of thousands to promote their products. He’s got a vanity license plate that says “AYYYYYYY.” It’s not enough.

Walter Pitts, who helped develop the “first mechanistic theory of the mind,” was so brilliant he was once been invited to study with Bertrand Russell. He was also homeless.

How a confused, defensive social media giant steered itself into a disaster, and how Mark Zuckerberg is trying to fix it all.

Sooner or later a technology capable of wiping out human civilization might be invented. How far would we go to stop it?

On the lost pickup basketball games in D.C. between Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor, then both still in college, during the summer of 1957.